


Just Another Day

by AngelOfDeath10



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Diners, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/M, Prompt Fic, Romance, Soulmates, fastburn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25769671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelOfDeath10/pseuds/AngelOfDeath10
Summary: When Sakura first met Gaara at her part time job she thought he drank too much coffee. A few months later, what should have been just another night proves to her that there in actuality may not be enough coffee in the world to explain his behavior.
Relationships: Gaara/Haruno Sakura
Comments: 12
Kudos: 57





	Just Another Day

**Author's Note:**

> I believe the request was a Soulmate Denny's AU fastburn 2k words with a character death. I am nothing if not compliant.

She wore the apron because the dress had no pockets.

She wore the dress because the first time she had worn something of her own she definitely spilled a plate of syrup and bacon grease down the side of her leg and that had made the skirt unsalvageable. Student loans didn't exactly keep her in style so Sakura had bowed to the utility of an issued diner uniform. The yellow of it didn't totally clash with her pink hair, but only because it had faded from many washings.

She knew to serve table 17 first because the guy who spent all night—possibly every night—sitting there with his expensive laptop and a notepad covered in numbers and symbols needed a pot of coffee first thing when her shift started. He would still be there when she left at a time that was too late to be quite considered early since the sun wasn't going to rise for another hour or so.

Morning shift said he left thirty minutes before the breakfast rush. She had asked.

After a season and a half of observing him working through every late-night incident (from the time a drug deal in the parking lot went south and the cops were called, to the heart attack that Sakura delivered successful chest compressions to prevent until the medics arrived) they had formed a sort of understanding.

Sakura seated people as far away from him as possible and unofficially guarded the table when he used the restroom periodically (as one can only expect some consequences to consuming whole carafes of coffee). Meanwhile, he provided her a place to sit on her fifteen-minute break. The red-haired programmer couldn't have known what those fifteen minutes did for Sakura. Between school, dramatic friends, and part-time jobs that were thankless and back breaking that little oasis with him was practically therapy. She would put her head down, close her eyes, and think about nothing except the clacking of his typing and the occasional scribble.

So one day when he left to go to the bathroom and she surreptitiously worked the broom slowly around a table near to his booth she was unprepared for the sight that met her shortly after. There was the usual loud radio coming from the kitchen as the cook did a lot of the nightly cleaning during the slow hours right before the bars closed downtown, and as Sakura popped her ears against a sudden drop in pressure that left her feeling a little dizzy there was a bang as the men's room door slammed against the wall and the programmer rushed out.

Grimly, Sakura wondered what kind of nightmare she'd be cleaning next based on his frantic exit but it was the way their collective green gazes locked that had her stutter to a stop and clutch her broom defensively. She wasn't wrong to classify his gaze as hungry as he stocked over and didn't even hesitate as he grabbed her face and kissed her with all the grave intensity that he used in his programming. He had already mapped her missing wisdom teeth with his tongue before Sakura got it into her mind that she _didn't know this man like that_. A twisting feeling in her gut told her that maybe she would like to, but there was a progression to things like this and he had skipped about twenty steps and at least one personal barrier of hers so it needed to stop.

Sakura pushed hard against the programmer's chest until they parted with a gasp, and held the broom bristles up with full intent to swing if he thought he was getting a round two. "What in the hell was that, Gaara?!"

"I thought you hadn't…." And then he tilted his head at her, eyes flicking up to her forehead and then back down to her lips with a mixture of horror and excitement that he stifled quickly. The neutral to grumpy expression she was used to returned to his face imperfectly, and as she searched his eyes bruised from a lifetime of sleep debt she noticed that there was something on his forehead that hadn't been there earlier this evening.

Unless he had a temporary tattoo hidden in his pocket when he went into the bathroom five minutes ago, he must have been shanghaied by his evil twin at the urinal.

"You need to answer the question or both of us are having an assault charge leveled at us tonight!"

"This is going to sound improbable—" Gaara started, and had to back up when Sakura jabbed the bristles at his face to get him to back up another couple steps. "But I'm going to walk back in that bathroom and in a couple minutes I'll walk out again and you need to forget this ever happened."

Sakura figured he was trying to save face since his big romantic gesture had gone sideways (though maybe not as sideways as it should have because, broom aside, another go at his lips sounded like a way better use of her evening than closing out the register for the morning shift and collapsing on her bed alone at home). Even if she wanted to grab him by the hair and drag him back to her tiny, cheap, but immaculate apartment she was better than her baser hormonal urges.

"Not likely. You better have a more convincing apology worked up for treating me like meat as well as a plan for regaining my trust otherwise you're going to have to figure out a way to hold in your pee every shift I work in perpetuity!"

Gaara, for his part, tilted his head at her words and allowed a smile to ooze across his face. It was so blatantly sensual that Sakura was poleaxed. This was not the stiff introvert that practically drew a line down the table the first time she sat and introduced herself. This was a man whose eyes lingered on her pulse points and whose fingers were still flexing as if he were restraining himself from reaching for her again. Instead of responding to Sakura, he gave her one more searing look and then wandered over to his laptop. Unlocking it quickly, his eyes flicked over his screen full of code and then back down to the paper on the table.

He wrote down some words and then regarded Sakura and her broom with a toothy smile that wasn't anything like friendly.

"Do you know someone named Sasuke in this Thread?"

Maybe he hit his head in the bathroom. There wasn't any good way to explain any of this. "No? What are you even talking about. You haven't said more than eight words to me in practically the entire time I've known you and now…"

"He…I've… wanted to." Gaara interrupted. Sakura seriously considered just beating him with the broom and venting her growing anger. "I don't like sweet things, but every time you lay your head down near me you smell like maple syrup and some flowery shampoo you use and I go home hungry."

Sakura didn't know what was going on, but between the goosebumps on her skin and her raised hackles she got the feeling like she didn't actually know this man. Un-Gaara smoothed hands down his nondescript maroon shirt as if searching for something and then worked a hand in his pocket to pull out a phone. His eyebrows raised.

Wandering just out of reach of her broom, Gaara moved in pacing half circles like a shark smelling blood. Suddenly, he stopped. "You saved him didn't you. That man, when you first started working here."

"What?"

"The heart attack. Sarutobi didn't die, did he?"

The silence between them was deafening. That day had been hell. The praise from the medics for her quick thinking had softened the fear in her heart that she had failed the old man. She discovered from the morning shift girl, Tenten, that the old man was a regular as well as a retired officer from the nearby base. He had a lot of friends and family who would have missed him, and he was still recovering at home so far as she knew. The heart attack had required a surgery that was rather extreme, but he wanted to thank her when he could allow visitors. Or so his grandson had said when he came to deliver a fruit basket to her at work with his eternal gratitude. Cute kid, though if anyone had called her a cute kid in middle school she would have drop kicked them so she didn't say it out loud.

With a speed that she would have sworn was inhuman, Gaara was under her guard and the broom was spinning across the room. She heard a ketchup bottle break and her expression went stormy. Didn't that piece of shit know she'd have to clean up the mess he was so blithely making? "Don't you dare…"

This time she had to pull his messy hair hard from the back to detach his mouth from hers because the groans that had been coming from this corner of the diner had most certainly not just come from him and this was an unacceptable state of affairs. He smelled like fireworks. There was also a hand on her ass mirroring what her hand was doing to his. Embarrassing.

"Forgive me. I don't think I'll ever get another chance like this. My Sakura can crush concrete like Styrofoam." The words were contrite, but the delivery certainly wasn't. He squeezed her once more, edging the line between pain and pleasure and the noise she made in response was pure gargled rage.

There was a beeping from his pocket, and in the time it took for him to deliver one last tender peck to her misused lips there was a drop in pressure that made her feel like her eardrums were sincerely going to burst and then she stumbled forward as she clutched air. A table stopped her from fully hitting the ground, but the disorientation was real.

Gaara wandered out of the bathroom, clutching his head, around the same time that Sakura had positively ascertained that she was not in fact bleeding from the ears even if her level of sanity was yet to be determined. No forehead tattoo, she noted, just a confused glance around at the mess of red on the floor as well as the scattered menus and napkin holders.

Sparing Sakura the briefest hint of a concerned look since she never sat down except for her break and always at their table, he half stumbled over to his laptop. With a low tone of discomfort, he closed the top and gently lay his head down. Sakura understood how he felt. Still not entirely sure she hadn't just hallucinated a very specific fantasy about the programmer who she was barely daring to call a 'work friend' if anyone had known to ask, she steeled herself and came to sit in her usual spot. Without the wall of laptop between them it felt more intimate.

"I don't understand why but I feel compelled to…. Apologize." Gaara said to the tabletop, where his face was currently still located.

"Ok." Sakura replied. Possibly because she needed the reassurance as much as he did, she slid a work callused hand over to twine her fingers with his. She could feel him shaking. The other him she trusted like a wolf in a henhouse, but this was her Gaara and he looked on the outside like she felt on the inside. "I think I'm going to take the day off tomorrow from, you know, everything."

His grip tightened around her fingers and Sakura wondered at the feeling that clutched her heart.

"What's a Thread?"

Gaara's head shot up so fast she saw the headache catch up in real time as his eyes pinched shut against the pain. Her eyes traced where the tattoo could have been and wondered what exactly the next few months would hold for them. If it was anything like the promise in his other's eyes, not a lot of sleep for either of them, she'd wager.


End file.
